276 WAGTAILS AND PIPITS 



It has been supposed by many that the comparatively obscure 

 coloration of the pipits, like that of the larks whom they so much 

 resemble, has been acquired by them as a protection against their 

 enemies in the struggle for existence ; but here, as in so many other 

 instances, the application of that doctrine is complicated by con- 

 siderations of so puzzling a kind, that cautious naturalists have found 

 it better, in practice, not to consider them. Why, for instance, if 

 natural selection has protected the meadow-pipit (let us say) through 

 his colour, should it, at the same time, have developed, or, rather, 

 have failed to check the development in him of a scent still stronger 

 than that of the skylark, 1 a scent which dogs, even of a respectable, 

 non-sporting kind poodles, for example will often follow, at speed, 

 and which must, therefore, be in the highest degree apparent to 

 weasels, stoats, polecats, cats, foxes, as also to rats and mice, all which 

 creatures are nocturnal, and all of which, if they prey on larks, would 

 no doubt do pipits that justice, to consider them as one and the same. 

 What is the value of a cloak of darkness against enemies that hunt in 

 darkness, and by scent ? It may, and, no doubt, will be said by 

 advocates of the theory under discussion, that weasels, stoats, cats 

 and polecats, as also, in a certain degree, rats, mice, and foxes, are 

 diurnal as well as nocturnal, so that, though their powers of destruction 

 are thus widened, the number of instances in which they fail to 

 destroy is, by this very fact, increased ; but I cannot see much force 

 in this reply. It is true, indeed, that the merlin, hobby, and sparrow- 

 hawk, the principal aerial enemies of both larks and pipits, hunt by 

 sight and in the daytime, but, so far as the air is concerned, a quarry 

 of not less than a fourth or fifth, perhaps, of their own size therefore 

 by no means a diminutive object in their regard should be con- 

 spicuous enough, however dully coloured, to birds whose visual 



1 Asserted, if I remember, by Prof. Newton to be the strongest scent possessed by any bird. 

 I, at any rate, having seen it scented out, and put up by a poodle, can testify that the 

 emanation is without that useful and mysterious property by which, at one and the same 

 time, a dog may be baffled and a theory saved such as (en attendant the evidence) has been 

 attributed to the skylark's. (See ante, " The Larks.") 



